Azure, Microsoft's flexible cloud platform, is now a billion dollar a year business, a Bloomberg
Bloomberg article has revealed. Microsoft's success in the cloud software arena shows that its reinvention as a company delivering online services (as opposed to software) is going strictly to plan. It also shows the company, although still in the tailwind of the arena's leaders, it is beginning to provide a viable challenge to cloud computing staples like Amazon and Rackspace.
The article, which includes interviews with James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. and David Smith, an analyst at Gartner, offered some interesting statistics. Alongside the fact that Azure had generated 1 million dollars in income over the last 12 months, it suggested that Windows Azure subscriptions increased 48% over the last 6 months. It went on to suggest that projections see even better things to come for Azure on the revenue front.
The article quoted research company Gartner Inc. as suggesting that infrastructure services represent the fastest growing cloud market component. They estimate a 38% annual revenue increase with the market reaching $30.6 billion by 2017, up from $6.17 billion in 2012.
"Not that many people have quite figured out that the Azure of today is not the same as two years ago," the article quoted Gartner analyst David Smith as saying. “It’s changed a lot and the issue is getting people to give it a second look."
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